Bye to Baghdad just in time

September 22, 2003

Baghdad Bernie Kerik - whose whereabouts for the past
three weeks have been as mysterious as Saddam Hussein's - has surfaced
in New York.

The city's former police commissioner checked in Friday,
saying his future political career, such as Your Humble Servant's suggestion
he run for Mayor of Passaic, N.J., was just "a lot of talk by people."

Instead, Kerik said, he "will do everything I can
to get President George Bush re-elected."

Four months ago, Kerik's send-off to Baghdad to train
an Iraqi police force was accompanied by a clamor of media ebullience.
His disappearance from Baghdad the day before a bomb went off at the police
office he was to visit was greeted with silence.

So what happened?

"I was lucky. I caught a hop [military transport]
to Amman, Jordan, where I had some business the day before," he said.
"I was supposed to leave on Sept. 3."

He left a day early. The day he was supposed to leave,
a bomb went off at the police headquarters where the special operations
office was run.

"I am there every day, and that day, I would have
been saying good-bye," Kerik said.

Kerik said that after leaving Amman, he went to Europe
to meet his family.

"I didn't have a day off in four months. I needed
some time off. I decompressed," he said.

His Views on Iraq:"There are 900 Democrats. Everyone's got the answer. Unless you've
been there, you don't have a clue. People at home know only one-tenth
about how bad Saddam was. They should walk through the mass graves. I've
seen a video of Saddam watching his Doberman eating a military general
alive. No one in this country understands. There was torture of thousands
and thousands of people."

His Views on the War:"People are still hung up on weapons of mass destruction. There
is a link between 9/11 and now, and the link is radical Islam. The suicide
bomber that drove the bomb into the United Nations in Baghdad is no different
from the suicide bombers who drove the planes into the World Trade Center.
There is an element in this world that despises us, that despises our
culture and our freedoms. We have a choice. We can fight it in Iraq and
Afghanistan, in that region, or fight it at home, in New York, in California
and Miami. I'd much rather fight it there."

Meanwhile, Back in the United States: Baghdad Bernie
is apparently so preoccupied with re-electing Bush that he has no recollection
of the corruption allegations brought to him in 1995 by correction officer
Robin Acosta. Kerik was first deputy commissioner of the Department of
Correction at the time.

This
Sept. 9, the day after Acosta's allegations appeared in Newsday, he was
transferred by Deputy Warden Edward J. Watkins and assigned to the unpleasant
swing shift known as "the wheel." Documents indicate the transfer was
backdated to Sept. 1.

After a reporter's call Wednesday to correction spokesman
Tom Antenen, the order was rescinded and backdated to Sept. 12.

The Official Word.
Here is the official word on the retirement of New York's FBI head Kevin
Donovan.

No one was offended that at Donovan's retirement dinner,
Commissioner Ray Kelly made only a cameo appearance. The bureau was aware
Kelly's aide Paul Browne had been calling, saying Kelly wanted to stay
longer but had another engagement.

No one saw irony in remarks by Deputy Commissioner
for Counterterrorism Mike Sheehan praising the excellent relations between
the bureau and Police Department, despite a recent anonymous crack in
which Kelly or one of his top aides said the FBI couldn't tell the difference
between a Saudi and a Yemenite.

Here now is the official word on Donovan's successor,
Pasquale D'Amuro: D'Amuro was selected for only two reasons: he is a New
Yorker and an expert in counterterrorism.

Although D'Amuro denies it, others say his close friend
FBI Director Robert Mueller also selected him to watch Kelly.

McCarthy Speaks.
While refusing to talk to One Police Plaza Confidential about a 1983 St.
Patrick's Day incident in the Bronx in which a uniformed but off-duty
Garry McCarthy got into a confrontation with two men, McCarthy did talk
to the Sun Times of Chicago. McCarthy, now a deputy commissioner and finalist
for superintendent of police in Chicago, told the Sun Times: "You're killing
me. I made a full report to the Police Board. It was a scenario I got
into, and I learned things from it. That's the only time I got in trouble
in this agency. The only blemish on an otherwise pretty good career."
(Still more to come.)